42 companies pony up $150k to become Mcity Affiliate members

ANN ARBOR – The University of Michgian announced that 42 companies have committed to investing $150,000 each in Mcity as Affiliate members over the next three years.

Mcity is the University of Michigan-led public-private R&D testbed for connected and autonomous vehicles. It’s located near UM’s North Campus Research Center.

“Motor vehicle crashes kill about 37,000 people every year in the United States and 1.2 million people globally,” said Huei Peng, Mcity director and the Roger L. McCarthy Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UM. “If we use new technologies right, we can save lives.”

Affiliate companies include domestic auto suppliers such as Lear Corp and Visteon Corp., overseas automakers such as Germany’s BMW and China’s GAC, international suppliers such as Canada’s Magna, software companies such as Microsoft, insurers such as Progressive, law firms such as Miller Canfield and Warner Norross & Judd, and a variety of electronics and wireless firms.

Affiliate members complement Mcity’s 11 Leadership Circle member companies, who have each committed a total of $1 million over three years to support Mcity and its programs in this second phase of funding.

To date, Mcity has invested about $20 million in 40 research projects. The total investment at Mcity and the UM Transportation Research Institute in connected and automated vehicle research, development, and deployment activities will exceed $100 million by 2020, with funding from UM, government agencies, and industry.

In addition, dozens of faculty and hundreds of students are engaged in work to advance mobility. New capabilities have recently been added to the Mcity Test Facility, including a traffic control center with augmented reality testing capability, and connectivity between vehicles and the traffic infrastructure.

Research vehicles at Mcity include a 15-passenger driverless shuttle and two open-source connected and automated vehicles, which are platforms to help U-M faculty and researchers speed innovation. Mcity is preparing to launch a driverless shuttle on U-M’s North Campus.